A Reporter Fights for His Freedom (Part Two)
Question Everything
Brian Reed
4.6 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After journalist Mario Guevara was arrested while covering an anti-ICE protest, ICE moved him into their detention. As his lawyers and the ACLU tried to get Mario free, ICE argued again and again that he shouldn’t be let out, because his journalism made him too dangerous.
Mario was behind bars for 111 days. Then deported to El Salvador.
If you’re wondering where the hell the first amendment is in all this, so are we!
In the second episode in our special two-part series about Mario Guevara, we look into how the federal government targeted and detained a reporter, and ultimately fast-tracked his deportation–his first amendment rights be damned.
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Guests:
- Mario Guevara, MG News
- Giovanni Diaz, ESQ.
- Scarlet Kim, ACLU
- Curtis Clemmons, former Gwinnett Sheriff's Deputy and Retired Assistant Chief of Gwinnett County Police
This episode has been updated to reflect the fact that the news outlet Mario did an interview with from El Salvador was not Fox News -- it was a local Fox affiliate in Atlanta.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. This is part two of our story about reporter Mario Guevara. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, go do that now. It should just be the previous episode in your podcast feed. Then come back here. Things will make a lot more sense if you do. Trust me. When we last left off, Mario was just being transferred into |
| 0:22.3 | ICE detention after having been arrested while covering an anti-ice protest outside Atlanta. |
| 0:28.0 | When seemingly out of nowhere, the sheriff's office in his county, Gwinnett County, which was not |
| 0:33.0 | where he was even arrested or being held, had slapped him with a bunch of traffic violations, which was |
| 0:38.4 | highly suspicious because the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office was claiming Mario had run a red |
| 0:43.3 | light and driven recklessly a month earlier. Even though they hadn't pulled him over at the time, |
| 0:48.3 | he'd gotten no ticket. |
| 0:50.0 | When they told me the sheriff of Gwinnnet presented charges against you, I said, why? |
| 0:58.4 | And why? That shocked me. Why? |
| 1:04.1 | Why were they doing this? |
| 1:06.8 | At the same time, an immigration judge had granted Mario release unbond, |
| 1:11.6 | writing that Mario was acting as a journalist and should be protected by the Constitution. |
| 1:15.4 | But I still didn't let him go. |
| 1:17.2 | They sought to stay on that judge's order. |
| 1:19.5 | If you're wondering where the hell the First Amendment is in all of this, |
| 1:22.7 | the whole no abridging freedom of the press and all that jazz, |
| 1:26.1 | well, so are we. |
| 1:29.4 | Our producer Sophie Kaises picks things up from here. Before we go any further, I'm going to jump to the end of the story, |
| 1:36.3 | because it'll help me illustrate how nefarious the government was in Mario's case. The end of the story, |
| 1:45.6 | Mario gets deported. |
| 1:51.0 | I remember very well on Wednesday afternoon. |
| 1:53.6 | It was October 1st of last year. |
... |
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